Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Time to update our calendar

Our current calendar is based upon both the ancient Roman's of the first century and Pope Gregory's adjustments from the 1500's.
It's time to update it, making it more in line with our modern day life. A few good options are available.
My first is to make every month 30 days long. What do we do with the extra 5 or, during leap year, 6 extra days? Simple. We add them on to December. I constantly hear that the Holidays are wonderful, but they are so short. Well, now the week between Christmas and New Year's is 12 or 13 days. Plenty of time to see family, or for those who like to use the Holidays to get away, enough time to visit both sets of relatives. And for the traditionalist, that stupid 12 days of Christmas song can be completed during the actual Holiday season. No more of that embarassing situation when one shows up unexpectedely on January 3 with 10 lords a leaping. These extra days may confuse Dick Clark at first, but at this point in his life, I think he basically is confused every day. As long as Ryan Seacrest shows up on December 35th, New Year's Eve will be rocking on schedule.
My second option is to go totally modern, and have a metric calendar.
10 days in a week. Sure, that will seem a little odd at first, but we will be able to adjust. Back when Pope Gregory switched over to the new calendar in the late 16th century, he just advanced the calendar forward almost 2 weeks in one day. Nothing catastrophic happened. To have these metric calendars, I have to eliminate 2 months and alter a third. Not really that hard to do. First, I'll eliminate September. That month traditionally is annoying anyway. Kids hate it because it is back to school month. Adults hate it because it symbolizes the end of the lazy days of summer. So, September is gone. April only has one pseudo-holiday, April Fools Day. This kind of a stupid day anyway, so no worries that we are losing a tradition that anyone really likes. Plus, April Fools day pisses me off for personal reasons. And April is a messed up month anyway. It's usually not that warm, and in the Northeast, we can have a surprise snowstorm. April is out of here.
For our short 5 day month, I propose we keep February. February is cold and dreary, so it is perfect that it be a short month. And it is chock full of Holidays like Washington's and Lincoln's Birthdays, Groundhog's Day, and Valentine's Day. For all intents and purposes, everyone can take off the entire month of February.

We have to add a few days into the week, though.
Since everybody really likes Fridays, we should have 2 of them.
What to name the other two?
One could simply be named Personalday, and it is part of the 4 day weekend. We all love personal days. And who doesn't appreciate it when a personal day is part of a long weekend?
I propose we sell the naming rights to the other one. It could change every few years. This year, it may be Viagraday, next year it could be Geicoday.
So here is my proposed week: Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Wednesday, Thursday, Traditional Friday, Personalday, Saturday, Viagraday, Sunday.
It works for me.

1 comments:

Ed said...

I'm also in favor of a calendar change and not opposed to either of your suggestions.

I do have one of my own: A 13 month year with 4 weeks each plus O (zero day) or 00 (double zero day when necessary).
This would vastly simplify the problem of remembering what the day of the week and the date are. Sunday would ALWAYS be on the 1st, 8th, 15th & 22nd; Monday would ALWAYS be on 2nd, 9th, 16th & 23rd etc.

Enjoy your blog!